Civil War Memory in the College Classroom

It has been a real pleasure learning of a number of college level courses that use Civil War Memory in some capacity. In a few weeks I head up to Shepherd University to talk with students in Professor Mark Snell’s seminar, “The American Civil War in Memory and Remembrance”. It turns out that students are assigned my blog as regular reading so it should be quite an experience to learn about what they think of some of the issues that I write about as well as the role of blogging as a form of remembrance.

The other day I came across a link to an online syllabus for a course on Public History. Civil War Memory can be found under Week 6, which focuses on slavery and public history. I’m not exactly sure where this course is being taught, but it looks to be quite interesting and I would love to know how the blog is being used. What kinds of questions are being discussed in class and what do students think of blogs as a public history tool? I highly recommend spending some time with the links on the syllabus, which include some dynamite history blogs and other assorted websites.

I have no way of knowing for how long I will continue blogging, but at some point I will have to give some serious thought to its preservation. My own view is that Civil War Memory can be understood from a number of different perspectives that connect to broader issues of historical memory and public history. On the one hand this site represents my own ongoing dialog about how I understand history as well as historical memory. Take one step back and the blog itself can be viewed as an expression of Civil War memory at the beginning of the twenty-first century.

This is really awesome, Kevin. I have to admit, I'm rather addicted to CWM, and check in often. I am always impressed by the dedication you show and I usually (though not always : ) ) agree with your analysis. It's also a testament to your abilities that you have attracted readers who submit excellent information and interpretation as well. Thank you for CWM and I hope you continue for some time to come.

Ooops–forgot to put my name on my course schedule! I just started using Google Docs for my syllabus and schedule, it is so much nicer than writing it in Word, and having to reload the file into Blackboard each time I make a change. The course syllabus is here: http://docs.google.com/View?id=ddr8xbpc_127fdb3…

I assign blogs because there is nothing like them to help students understand that history is a conversation, not a fixed set of facts and interpretations.

Kevin, I am realizing that I should have invited you into the conversation for this online class! Next time I'll contact you in advance and we can set something up.

We could easily do a Skype talk at some point. I would love to get involved. Sorry about the problem with the comments. You are the first to point out that there seems to be a problem. Can you be more specific?

For the Civil War buffs among us, it’s really worth spending some time over at Kevin Levin’s blog, Civil War Memory. I can’t act like I discovered the place–some readers brought it to my attention. But it’s a great blog dealing in exactly what its title claims.